Chapter One: Orissa
by Shenstratashah
Summary: Description of Orissa, and how it was changed.


**CHAPTER ONE - Orissa  
**

After a long hot day the conflict was finally drawing to a close. In the west, the timeless, yet bloodless battle between the sun and the stars for control of the sky was finally reaching its end.

Hovering precariously above the ocean and waiting for the final heave against it, the helpless sun could but reminisce about its short but spectacular rule. All day it had traversed the sky and scorched the land, jealously burning away the little flurries of cloud that had tried to usurp it, and mercilessly vapourising every small pool of water that had foolishly appeared beneath its glare.

In the early evening, oblivious to the designs of the scheming stars, the sun, having vanquished all before it began to cool its intense beams, and in that moment of complacency, when the time was just right, the stars, and their ally the night emerged from the east, and quickly took control of much of the sky - purging it of the sun's vibrant and pure light.

Wholly surprised by the dark coup, the sun had retreated westwards in a vain attempt to escape the onslaught. Instinctively it burned the horizon, and defiant shades of orange and red radiated across all the western sky. However the sun's glorious beams of light were no match against the invincible darkness. Unable to hold the sky for their fast submerging master, the rearguard of oranges and reds were reduced to pale yellows, and when the sun finally succumbed to the inevitable and slipped below the horizon, the yellows were replaced by a period of purple twilight as the gloomy sky mourned the sun's passing. But that too vanished, and with it went the last trace of the sun's existence.

The sun was gone, unceremoniously forced from the sky and plunged into the ocean, where in the deep and out of sight its fire was extinguished. In the sky, the sun's light was completely replaced with shadow. Night had prevailed, and the silver stars filled the now twinkling sky.

Without the benevolent warmth that the sun's once radiant golden glow offered, the air turned cold and bitter, and with the sky in their grip, the stars shimmered and danced in glorious celebration. They had completely and suddenly overwhelmed their old adversary, and would rule until the Gods resurrected the sun at dawn. Such a day's end so typical of Earth, and yet this was not the Earth. This was an Indian planet called Orissa.

Situated three hundred light years from Earth, on the legally defined border that separated civilisation from the untouched void, Orissa was a manmade oasis in the black desert of space. She had been at one time lifeless and ownerless but history had changed her fate completely.

Many years previously, as great technological advancements had opened the way to the colonisation of space, mankind had been faced with a dilemma. At the very moment when humanity should have been celebrating its own inimitable genius, celebrating the possibilities that advanced space travel could bring, uncertainty had reigned.

Scientific triumphs had far outpaced the old political order, and troubled by the possibility of an anarchic scramble for space, based on the philosophy of might is right, a series of conferences were convened at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City.

The leaders of the all the major nations on Earth, seeing the potential dangers that could arise from not having an agreed Space, sent their most senior diplomats to calmly yet forcefully plan the future and discuss the vacuum before them.

After months of negotiations, an accord, that came to be known as the Treaty of New York was agreed and signed into law at a modest ceremony at the Security Council. Under the terms of the treaty vast areas of space were divided up between the major nations and power blocks.

The new agreed Space, an ordered diplomatic compromise instead of an unseemly imperial scramble for territory, was neither unfettered in design nor unlimited in scope however.

The architects of the treaty had realised that even in the vast limitless nature of space some degree of restraint was required. They generously allowed themselves to imagine a line that stretched three hundred light years from the Earth, out into the deepest of deep space. Their imaginary line was turned into a radius, and with this radius in place, they constructed an imaginary sphere about it, with the Earth at its centre. They decreed that this spherical border marked the furthest limit any nation could expand to without having to return to the conference table to negotiate further.

Like an orange being sliced by a sharp knife, the sphere was cut up, and its pieces assigned to all the principle players. The architects' simple and effective formula had expertly defused every political minefield that had existed, and the great rival nations of Earth set out into space in peace.

The Eurasian Union, the alliance of English speaking countries known as the Washington Treaty Alliance, China, and India had all received the most significant pieces in negotiations, and by chance, Orissa happened to fall into the Indian segment.

To the untrained eye, Orissa was a planet of immense natural beauty. Those unfamiliar with modern life and scientific advancement could be forgiven for thinking that such a thriving wonder may have existed since time immemorial. However she had only attained her beauty in more recent times through an entirely artificial means after having undergone a grand surgical process called terraforming.

The only thing comparable to a life spent in space, surrounded by void, would be a life spent in the sea, immersed in water. A life where man one day decided to abandon the land and instead go live out his life amongst the fish. Such an existence in the ocean was not so dissimilar nor far removed from a life in space, where everything was different, every task was difficult and every moment held the potential for danger.

Man had to encase himself in a technological bubble to survive the alien conditions. It didn't take him long to realise that a prolonged time spent in such a bubble was sure to lead to ill health, madness or worse. The very bubble that kept him alive would become a prison, and the hulks of metal and materials that separated him from the void outside would become a tomb, trapping his mind and soul. In time, with such confinement, he'd grow to despise and curse the technological advancements of his own making.

In everything man did in space he was reminded that although he was part of this enormous universe, he only truly belonged on one tiny pale blue dot. Beyond the protection of his home world and his relatively small space ships he was surrounded by a merciless enemy, one which by its sheer emptiness possessed nothing but the ability to destroy him. This enemy waited patiently for mistakes or accidents to occur before pouncing. A breach in a spacecraft's hull or a puncture in a spacesuit became battles of life and death. Trivial incidents on Earth left man dealing with his own mortality in space.

Earlier uneducated man, if he had of known of the void, with its unending blackness and its hostility to all life, may have labelled it soulless and evil. Although modern space faring man had left many of the old superstitions behind him back on Earth, he couldn't help but fear the void in much the same way the ancients must have feared the demons that lurked in the forests and the dark of night.

To survive physically and mentally, both away from the Earth and in the small confining spaceships, the conquest and transformation of the inhospitable void became a necessity, and the only solution was to make the universe just like home, just like Earth. To achieve this feat mankind sought out suitable worlds and turned them into mirrors of his home. The process was called terraforming, and it involved bringing warmth to what was cold, making breathable what was airless, and making fertile what was fallow.

Terraforming was not just an industrial process to make a planet habitable however. For those who devoted their lives to it, terraforming was an art and a science but it was also much more than that. It was an obsessional dedication to gain control and mastery over the most powerful forces in the universe- life and death. It was the desire by something as puny as man to conquer something as big as a whole world. It was the desire by man to take on the Gods, and whatever problems they could throw at him, and by force of will and stubborn single mindedness overcome them, and emerge victorious.

With every changed world a declaration was being sounded loudly that nothing could be allowed to stand in the way of the march of mankind. The invisible and mysterious forces that formed the universe were not the masters of man. No line could be drawn in the sand by anything other than man himself, and the limits of his own imagination. Only man could be allowed to control and dictate his own destiny.

He shirked at the possibility of spending that destiny on spaceships or space-stations. He wanted and needed a sky above his head, something solid under his feet and a landscape in which to think and grow. The construction of such a new home represented his greatest challenge – not merely to live in the universe but to change it.

And Orissa was the latest in a long line of planets where mankind had faced that challenge and prevailed.

Only a single decade previously she had been a barren rock orbiting aimlessly round her sun, forever doomed like a woman unable to bear children to ever carry life. Now however, with the gift of life from man that futile fate had been altered entirely and forever.

When the scientists had first laid eyes on Orissa they couldn't have possibly resisted. Even dead she was a rare gem, and planets like her were coveted and cherished by all the nations who sought to build homes in the nothingness. Orissa had called out to them, and seeing past her lifeless state, the scientists had imagined a new vibrant blue planet. What had drawn their attention and attracted them most was her similarity to Earth. Of comparable size, she possessed a gravitational force equal to that of Man's home world. She also possessed a warm core and a thick atmosphere capable of protecting her from the invisible dangers of cosmic radiation. Such economically friendly features attracted the financiers too. Visions of construction, farming and exploitation of minerals quickly earned their interest.

Thoughts of the fate of mankind and scientific endeavour could not alone sustain terraforming. With employees, economic plans and listings on the stock market, terraforming was also a business, and like any other business it required money. When the financiers looked at Orissa they saw targets that could be met, and profits that could be made. A planet with gravity, warmth and atmosphere was like building an apartment block with much of the preparatory work already done - the foundations were already in place. With Orissa it required little or nothing to convince the financial men, and they had clamoured to invest.

However, despite the natural advantages, terraforming Orissa had still required a great deal of logistical effort. Necessary components had been assembled from all across the galaxy. Captured comets provided the phenomenal quantities of water required, and a whole swathe of different chemicals, bacteria, fungi and various other elements had been strategically scattered across the planet in great quantities.

Small dome shaped structures had been erected to house the terraformers, and combined with a planet wide industrial operation that had seen the release of billions of tonnes of gases into the atmosphere, and the flooding of hundreds of millions of acres of land with trillions of gallons of water, Orissa had been slowly but surely given life.

Over the years the terraformers had shielded and protected the vulnerable being they had created. With constant nurture and reinforcement, her life-force became stronger and stronger until eventually Orissa had matured into a self sustaining entity. At that moment she had reached a point of no return, where the process could not be reversed. The terraformers had kindled a fire that had grown fierce and was one that could not now be extinguished willingly. They had perfected and mastered their trade many times over on other worlds, and now Orissa was another supreme monument to their skill. From being able to support only the most basic organisms, she had graduated to more and more complicated varieties of life, to the point where she could now sustain plants and insects, and animals and people. The terraformers could leave their domes and walk in the fields and swim in the seas. Once an airless, parched and dusty landscape had dominated, but now Orissa was mother to a vibrant ecosystem and from a heavenly vantage point in space she glowed a radiant blue. In every way imaginable she had become an unspoiled mint condition Earth; a collectible that was only now being taken from its box. Every natural aspect, from her blue skies and clear rivers, to her emerald forests and her snow capped mountains, combined to make Orissa a perfect paradise fit for settlement.

However the great majority of settlers had yet to arrive. It was planned that eventually millions of them would make Orissa their home, but for now the only thing of significance that was currently fully operational was a large military base containing the headquarters of the Indian 6th Solar fleet - the base having been given prominence over all other construction projects by the politicians at an early stage due to Orissa's proximity to the border with old rivals China, and the potential vulnerability that came with such intimacy.

But apart that, only a small army of terraformers, climatologists, engineers, construction technicians and administrators called Orissa home, however temporary the concept of home might be for many of those with such transitionary jobs. After ten years of hard work, Orissa was now only a ribbon cutting ceremony away from completion.


End file.
